


Double-Bluff

by Eloisa



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-12
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloisa/pseuds/Eloisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archades, after midnight.  Vaan’s in his element, but Basch is on home ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double-Bluff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skybluecassowary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skybluecassowary/gifts).



Larsa woke.  For a few moments he was unsure why he had awoken, and even whether he was still dreaming: the skies behind his curtains were full dark, and he heard no sound in his chambers, just a faint tinkling from the fountains outside.

Then he heard the noise in the corridor, spilling into his receiving room.  Footsteps, jangling and fuss.

He sat up, reaching beneath his pillow, but the door slid open, filled by a figure in Judge’s armour.  “Your Imperial Majesty,” Basch said with a bow.

Larsa relaxed.  “Judge ‘Gabranth’.  Your troops woke me.”

“You have our apologies.”  Basch slipped inside and closed the door behind him.  “I hesitate to disturb your sleep, but there is an intruder in the palace.  The guards are –”  He hesitated.  “Confused.”

“How lucky,” Larsa said softly, “that I have my personal Judge to protect me.”

Basch’s lips thinned, and he said, “Majesty, I trust there is no cause for alarm, but I must pursue this intruder myself.  I will post extra guards on your door.  No one will enter.”

“I’m certain they will not.”  Larsa nodded permission for him to leave.

The door clicked shut behind him, followed by the receiving room door – locked.  Larsa sighed.  He fingered the collection of keys beneath his pillow, and decided to leave them where they were.

Curtains rustled over the arched windows on the far wall.  He looked up.

*

One imperial guard leant panting against a corridor statue, but straightened with a clatter when he saw Basch.  His two squad-mates were conferring a few feet away.  From their expressions, they had not located the intruder.

“It’s a ghost, sir,” said the one on the left.  “A vengeful s-spirit c-come to –”

The man on the right drew himself up straighter, chest puffed out.  “The intruder, sir,” he said with barely a tremor, “passed along this corridor and concealed himself in the passages beyond.”

Basch raised his eyebrows.  “Concealed.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“And yet was seen outside the Emperor’s chambers.”

The man who had been supporting himself on the statue stepped forward.  “He wasn’t seen there, sir.  He – he left these there.”  He held out a handful of Galbana lilies.

Basch took them in one mailed hand.  With too automatic a motion he lifted them to his nose.  The soft scent wreathed his nostrils, and for a moment he remembered old times, days both bloodier and simpler.

Losing a war was, in many ways, easier than winning.

He passed the lilies back to the soldier.  “Have these taken to the Emperor.  You two,” and he turned to the other men, “join the guard over his Imperial Majesty’s chambers.  When the reserves arrive, send them after me.”  He turned and strode away while they were still saluting.

The guards’ noise faded into the distance as he rounded a bend in the corridor.  Lily-scent still wafted around him, ghost-like indeed.  He drew his sword.  He doubted he would need it.

“Vaan,” he called.  Why, when he brought up a mental image of Vaan, did he always think of Reks first?  He’d travelled with the one boy for so long, and known the other so briefly.

A staircase swam into view ahead.  Passages branched off its head – he could have gone anywhere.  “Vaan, come out.”  The only sound in the palace corridors was his own armour jangling as he walked.  “Come out!”

Sly laughter crested the staircase.  “How about ‘hello’ next time?”

Basch looked up.  Vaan was perched on a gargoyle high in the stairs’ roof-space, grinning down at him.  “You’ve changed,” he called.  “Like a whole new person.  Except that scar.”

Vaan hadn’t changed.  Pale blond hair a shade off from his brother’s still flopped over his eyes.  “This is beyond foolish,” Basch said, lowering his sword-point.  “If anyone other than I were here –”

“Then we wouldn’t be having this chat, _Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg_.”  He swung down and landed on the banister.  Basch hesitated, squeezing his sword hilt.  Vaan grinned again and raised his eyebrows twice, and stood up on his tiptoes.  “Always wondered what it’d be like to see you from this angle.”

“You need to stop this.”

Vaan waved a finger at him.  “Your problem, you’re still thinking sideways.”  He squatted, and dropped off the edge of the banister to the floor below.  Basch caught a breath and dashed down the stairs.

Darkness, at the bottom, in the anteroom.  Corridors spread off it, leading to government offices, the council chamber, Judges’ offices – and the treasury.

“Vaan,” he called.  “ _Vaan_.”

Laughter, a boy’s joyous laughter, rang round the anteroom.  “Can’t see me?  _Look_.”

Pale blond hair flashed in Basch’s field of vision.  He turned, not sure if he expected to see a young soldier or a young thief: he saw neither.

“Vaan,” he said, breathing too hard, “if you steal from Larsa, I will take you into custody.  Neither of us wants that.  _Reks_ wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Silence answered him.  He slowly pivoted on one foot, sword up, but saw nothing.  “Come out,” he murmured again.

A sigh, maybe off to the left.  “So who do you really want to see when I do?”

Off to the left – towards the treasury?  It was behind three locked doors, but Basch suspected Vaan had opened more locked doors this evening – and escaped in the past from tighter holes.  Soft and quiet, as if he were the thief, he began moving towards the first door, at the far end of the corridor.

“Now, if I did that,” Vaan said from the shadows, “I’d have to run away, wouldn’t I?”

Basch scanned the gloom ahead.  “No different from your actions this evening.”

“Well, maybe –”

Breath brushed his ear.

“– I’m tired of running.”

Basch started, and turned.  Vaan was standing in front of him, less than a foot away.  He leant in, quick darting movement, and kissed Basch full on the lips.  Heat and sweat, overwhelming, pressed down on his tongue and his soul – and as quickly as it started, it was gone, and so was Vaan.

Shaking, Basch looked up, down, sideways.  The far door was still closed.  _Not_ the treasury, then.

The council chamber door behind him creaked open.

Basch sprinted for the door and threw it wide.  The council table sat silent and eerie in the gloom.  Curtains wafted and billowed along the far wall.  Open window – wide open window, with Vaan perched on the sill.

Vaan waved, a smile crackling across his lips.  “Knew I’d make it in here.”

“Don’t –”  Basch cleared his throat.  “Don’t move.  You’ll fall.”

He wrinkled his nose.  “That’s not in the plan.”

Basch took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Behind, he heard booted feet tramping down the corridors: the reserves, come to help him.  To _help_ him.  “Stop this.  It gains you –” nothing?  Really?  “Nothing.”

Vaan laughed.  “Count the chairs, Basch.”

Startled, Basch looked at the chairs around the council table.  All were still there.  One or two stood an inch from their places.  Larsa’s chair, in the middle, was skewed half a foot to one side, and the notepad in front of his place riffled in the breeze.

The imperial seal, which should have sat on top of the notepad – the imperial seal, mark of Larsa’s authority – was gone.

He turned back round.  Vaan was gone too.  Just the curtains moved.

Basch ran to the window.  “I know you’re there.  Come back.”  He leant outside.  “Come back!”

Below, a lithe figure was just visible, climbing downwards.

*

Larsa sipped his tea.  If the servants had been startled to see their Emperor entertaining a young lady in the middle of the night, they had said nothing untoward.  “I am glad of this opportunity to talk.  I do miss our travels.”

“Freezing in the Paramina Rift. I bet.”  Penelo fidgeted, and pointed to the imperial seal, lying on the side table beside the teapot, her discarded teacup and a small vase of flowers.  “Should we go tell them?”

The Emperor tucked his seal back into his dressing-gown pocket.  Almost identical to the fake in the council chamber, but not _quite_ the same.  “No.  Let them play.”


End file.
